Summer Camp for Adults....Part Two

As you can imagine, being loaded into a school bus with 40 strangers that all had way to much to drink the night before is never a pleasant thing.  Add to that, the fact that our once pristine bus had been trashed by the green bus and you have some riled up campers.  Thank god we were now into the thick of our first day as campers and were headed towards the R. Stuart and Co. Winery which also happened to house one of my favorite pinot producers...Panther Creek.  This being our first day of seminars I think most of us expected some lame cookie cutter presentation from a freckle faced tasting room attendant that most of us would have probably chewed up and spit out in the area of wine production....once again Pinot Camp had a few more surprises in store. 

We began by all being gathered into a large room where the fermentation tanks were and then herded into an area where we watched a brief video about wine making and the different types of fermentation....pretty standard stuff.  Then something new was thrown our way....we were put into 3 different groups and each group was given a little experiment that they had prepared for us.  My first was the experimentation of the process of acidification...now stick with me here and I will try not to geek out too much.   Acid is a component in a grape that is present before, during, and after the grapes life cycle.  When a grape is young and under ripe it is full of acid, but as it ripens the sugar is created and replaces the acid.  In a perfectly ripe grape the two, acid and sugar, are in balance.  Then when this grape is pressed into juice, and if fermented correctly, you end up with a balanced wine...and by that I mean the sugar content of the wine is not overwhelmed by the acid content and vice versa.  This is one of the things that winemakers try to do on a daily basis....balance these two very important parts of the wine.  So if you followed that than you can probably figure out that this is not always the case!  Alot of times Mother Nature can be a real bitch and she can throw curve balls at you and terribly screw up this process.  This is a time when the process of acidification is used.  This is the process in which acid is added to a must (pressed grape juice) to balance out the fact that the grapes were over ripened and there for produced too much sugar.  Now most wine makers would tell you they would never do such a thing...it would be unnatural....yeah right...that like saying movie stars don't get boob jobs!  However the point of this little experiment was not to call out wine makers that bend the rules a little...no it was to help us as wine buyers be able to taste the difference in a wine that had been manipulated and one that had been made with out any added acid structure.  Reason being is that most wines that have been manipulated are more likely to be unstable at a later date as they age. 

So the experiment went like this...they gave us each two wine glasses...then poured us each a different wine in each glass and did not tell us which was acidified and which was not....they then gave us all a few minutes and did a show of hands...was it wine number one or wine number two that had been acidified.  Before I tell you the results I would like to point out a few things...first off these two wines were the exact same wine at one point...same grapes, same harvest date, same wine maker, same soak time...but then for the cause of this experiment the wine maker added acid to half of the batch and basically ruined perfectly good, sell-able, wine.  I thought to myself that is a pretty big commitment to a project for complete strangers!  This is a point that I noticed numerous times about Pinot Camp...these people all gave their blood, sweat, tears, and of course wine so we could learn and become more knowledgeable in our field...and for that I am very grateful!  So now that we had all tasted the two wines we raised our hands and about two-thirds of us got that wine number one had added acid...but how you may ask...well it is actually very simple.  When acid is present in a wine it will make you saliva glands go into overdrive.  When you drink the wine the acid binds to your saliva and when you swallow the wine it cleanses your mouth of most of that saliva...then your taste buds say "hay where did all the saliva go?"  The saliva glands then kick into overdrive to replace the missing saliva...so when you taste a wine with a fair amount of acid pay attention to those little glands and what they are doing and you can gauge if a wine is full of acid or not.  Oh yeah...and wine with good acid is great for heavy foods with alot of sauce...but that is a blog for a different day.  Once again as I stood here and listened to the wine makers answer questions about this process it stuck me that this truly is a unique test of your palate and nowhere else can you get a test like this.  I mean you can take a low acid wine, like maybe big Aussie shiraz, and copmare it to a high acid wine, like a German riesling, but that apples to oranges...this was the exact same wine except the added acid.  A truly unique experience. I was now really excited as we moved to our next little expirament...to cork or not to cork?

We took our little party across the street to the bottling room for Panther Creek and began to listen to the wine maker from Brooks winery...another favorite...who talked to us about the corking process and the difference between using corks or screw caps.  To make this not too much of a geek out moment again I will try to keep this short....basically a cork is in the to of the bottle of wine to seal it while at the same time let a very minute amount of oxygen into the wine over a long period of time.  This helps the wine age and makes it taste better in the long run...but there is a unsolvable problem with corks.  Cork is a natural product that comes from a tree...it is inconsistent and can let a wine get spoiled.  Now I am not taking a stance for screw caps here, but that facts are very clear...in a single vintage up to ten percent of a wine sealed with corks may be "corked."  That means that if you use corks you may loose up to one out of every ten bottles you make...that is not good when your trying to run a business.  I can guarantee that if the Chef at my restaurant had one in ten plates returned to the kitchen that he would be the newest member of the McDonalds team on South College St. by the end of the week!  So why screw caps then...well because a screw cap is not made by Mother Nature...it is made by man and there for is a very exact tool for a wine maker.  Screw caps let in the exact amount of oxygen that the wine maker desires, and as long as there is no damage to the closure, there is no corkage at all!  So then why doesn't everybody just use screw cap right?  Well that is what our next experiment was all about. 

We were once again given two glasses....two wines were again poured blind.... and we had about ten minutes to figure out which had been sealed with a screw cap and which had been sealed with a cork.  Once again I am going to elaborate on this little experiment.  Just like our first experiment this wine at one time was the exact same wine, but the wine maker stopped the bottling line half way through the process...changed all the bottles and types of closures on the bottling line and then donated them to the cause of Pinot Camp...pretty cool huh?  Oh and by the way this was a ten year old bottle of Oregon Pinot that the winemaker had held onto for this little test...so your talking a serious commitment!  So once again after a show of hands about two thirds of the people got that wine two had been a screw cap and wine one had been a cork.  Your probably asking how did we do it this time?  Well you can probably guess that a cork would have a little more earth on it due to the cork being in contact with the wine...so no real secret here...the second wine tasted cleaner while the first one was more earthy.  Depending on what style of wine you prefer that would answer the screw cap or cork question for you...I personally preferred the screw cap style a little better because I feel that the fruit showed a little better...but to each his own!

After two of these little experiments I now was really interested in what came next.  We moved back over to the fermentation room side of the winery where we all gathered around a sorting table (a large conveyor belt that moves grapes along to the fermentation area so that the bad ones can be picked out).  Here we were told about another interesting experiment from the lead wine maker at Domaine Serene...whole cluster vs. non whole cluster fermentation. I know, I know what the heck does that mean....and please know that I am trying not to be the biggest cork-dork in the world....it's just happening! 

Well when the grapes are picked from the vineyard they are picked from the vine on a stem and the group of grapes are called a cluster.  When the grapes are then transported to the winery they go to the sorting table and the wine maker will make a decision, after sorting all the bad grapes out, if they will then stay on the cluster or be destemmed.  If they are left on the cluster then the grape juice will have more tannins and if they are destemmed then the grape juice will be less tannic.   So why do you ask does this matter....well that is lengthy discussion but for now lets just say that certain people like tannic wines and certain people don't!  By now you have probably figured out what the experiment is and also that about two thirds of the group guessed right about the two wines.  Hopefully by this point you are beginning to see what makes Pinot Camp such an amazing experience.  For most people it would just be a cool event to attend just for fun but for people in the wine business, that taste a huge array of all types of wine and then have to sort through what is crap and what is quality, it is something that I believe is incomparable to any other event in the country. 


By now, as you have probably figured out, most of us were borderline drunk or at least definitely had a buzz...so after a quick lunch, and more wine, with the wine makers that had given the seminar we were loaded back onto our buses for my favorite part of the day...nap time.  Now I am not just saying that I wanted to take a nap...even though I did...they actually put in our itinerary, every day, an hour for "nap-time"...which I did indeed indulge in before getting ready to head to dinner at Domaine Serene....and oh what a dinner!!!

After awaking from our slumber we were all carted to the property at Domaine Serene for a tasting from all of the wineries and then a sit down dinner.  Once again I arrived and employed a little recon, tasted my way through the event, hit up one of the Domaine Serene guys for a free t-shirt, and then made my way down to the pavilion for dinner.  As I began to wonder around the pavilion I noticed all sorts of large format bottles appearing...magnums of St. Innocent, double magnums of Elk Cove, and Jeroboams of  Eyrie....needless to say that means there was alot of wine to be drank....and as campers I felt like we were up to the task.  By now I had run into a good friend, John Kimball, who actually got me into the sommelier program and we decided to grab a table together.  We ended up sitting with Grace Evenstad...who just happens to be one of the owners of Domaine Serene....so as you can guess we got to drink some amazing wines that night!!!  Dinner was absolutely numbing....seared loin of rabbit with blackberry jus...Humboldt fog and butter lettuce salad...venison with a foie gras stuffing...and chocolate terrine for dessert.  If your mouth is watering by now than imagine how stuffed we were and how tired we were after a long day.  We were all ready to be loaded back onto our buses and head home for a much needed nights rest to get ready for the next day....but as we did head that way I asked myself "what would tomorrow have in store?"  Little did I know it would be another day of amazing experiments, an insane dinner, karaoke, beer pong with my new friends from Japan...and most of all the sweet taste of revenge!   

Summer Camp for Adults...Part One!

About this time last June I was on an airplane headed from Atlanta, Georgia to Portland, Oregon for a little wine outing called Oregon Pinot Camp that I honestly did not know that much about.  I was invited, which by the way is the only way to get into this event (not that I am trying to brag, I'm more keeping you from spending endless hours on trying to get into Pinot Camp), by Tahmiene Momtazi the winemaker from Maysara Winery located in McMinnville, Oregon. Now I had heard of this mythical Pinot Camp, but had never met anybody that had actually been.  So I bought a plane ticket, got on the airplane, and prepared for whatever this crazy adventure would bring....and boy did it bring the pain!  To begin I will try not to bore you with too much of the geeky stuff that a true wine nerd like me really enjoyed about Pinot Camp and Oregon as a whole.  I will also try not to include too many stories of drunken retard ism and  debauchery....just a little.  Lastly, as I have stated many times, please bear with me...some of that nights got a little blurry and some of the mornings were rather painful....as to be expected at such a magnanimous event!

So to answer the most obvious questions, to go ahead and get it out of the way, what is Oregon Pinot Camp?  This is an event that the Oregon winegrowers association, Oregon winery owners, and distributors all over the country have put together to educate wine buyers, sommeliers, wine shop owners, restaurant owners, and anybody else that may sell wine for a living on exactly what is going on in the Oregon wine world.  It is a four day, four night experience of wine seminars, wine tasting experiments, ob-seen dinner experiences, and most of all first hand tut-ledge from some of the most knowledgeable wine people on this side of the Atlantic Ocean.  Moreover, it is a complete immersion in the Oregon wine experience.  We got to sample wines that I can honestly say you will not find anywhere in the world, get dirt between our fingers, and hold conversations with people that will forget more about wine than I will ever know.  So as you can imagine, for a cork-dork like myself, this is comparable to letting Charlie Sheen loose in the Playboy mansion with a pocket full of Viagra!

To begin, the day that I landed in Portland was the same day that The US soccer team played Gahna in the world cup to move onto to the quarter-finals.  Now if you know anything about Portland than you know that is probably the most soccer crazed city in the entire United States of America...no way I am missing this party!  So shortly after touchdown Tahmiene and I found ourselves in downtown Portland drinking a nice glass of Guinness and chanting USA, USA, USA....to no avale...we lost in overtime....oh well....no need to worry ourselves with such a terrible thing.  Instead we headed into the heart of the Oregon wine world...the Willamette Valley!

As we headed south she told me a little about the difference in Oregon as a wine growing region and say Napa.  First off Oregon has a myriad of different types of soil....and not just spread over the length of the different AVA's...no... in some vineyards as tiny as a few acres you may have four or five different types of soil.  You probably ask yourself "doesn't this make growing a consistent product a pain in the neck?"  Well the answer is yes and no...it makes a winemaker do much more research on their land and it also makes it much harder to plan what type of grape to plant....but the yes far outweighs this.  When you have alot of varying soil types then you get alot of varying flavors from the grapes that come from this soil.  This means that when you go to blend the final wine you have great depth and complexity in that wine...which is what makes Oregon dirt so great.  Another point that she pointed out to me is that Oregon's climate is quite different from Napa.  It's average temperature is about four to five degrees cooler and their is much more sunshine...which sounds like a bad thing.  Then she mentioned an interesting fact that I had never considered...the lattitude of Oregon.  Oregon is so far north, that other than Alaska, it has the longest days of anywhere in the US...which for grapes is a dream come true.  To produce great wine you need long sunny days, that are not too hot or too cold....which is Oregon in a nutshell.   Then to elaborate even further, this is the perfect climate for my favorite grape of all....Pinot Noir!!!

Arriving at Tahmiene's house I was told to get dressed for an outside tasting and picnic and was told that we would probably be going out after words for a "drink"....that's like saying Captain Ahab might go after Moby Dick.  So I dressed for cool weather and prepared my liver for what was to come.  We took off for a little winery right in the heart of the Willamette Valley named Sokol Blosser.  Pulling into the driveway I had not noticed something...partly from the Guinness and partly from the jet-lag....it was already 7pm and the sun was still high in the sky. Tahmiene pointed this fact out to me and I really began to appreciate the difference of this amazing place I had been transported to.  We walked up to the middle of one of the of the vineyards and we were in the middle of about sixty different tables that each represented a different winery and were all there to showcase the very best wines that Oregon had to offer.  Now if you read my blog last week you know that I first did a little recon....Domaine Serene, check....St. Innocent, check....Argyle, check....all the big boys had brought out their big guns....yep this was going to be a shit show!  Next to start with a little bubbly...Argyle's Brut...perfect....then onto the heavier stuff....Chardonnay, Pinot Noir, Merlot, Caberent...everything was here.  Just when I thought maybe I was imbibing a little too heavy they opened up the BBQ pits and began serving us whole roasted pig and ribs that would have made the most southern pitmaster proud.  Now with my belly full of delicious BBQ and unbelievable wines it was time for a nap right?  Nope....not in these parts...now it is time to head out into downtown McMinnville with one of the most unusual assortment of strangers that all had only one thing in common....we were all campers at Oregon Pinot Camp 2010.  Sometime around two am Tahmine dragged me away from a conversation with a winemaker about whole cluster fermentation so that we could get some rest....after all it was going to be a long day that began at seven am....which for me was the earliest I would have been awake all year.

Sure enough at six fifty five...after working out, drinking twelve cups of coffee, and probably doing some work at her winery....Tahmiene was knocking on my door to make sure I would be ready in time to get onto the school bus....yes I said school bus!  A small fact that she had not told me was that the transportation for all of the campers via school bus.  Now I am not talking air conditioned, bucket seated, buses....no I am talking big yellow, stinky school buses.  At first I was a little curious about this....but the more I thought about it, the more sense it made.  What a great way to transport some of America's most influential wine buyers all over Oregon than a big yellow school bus!  Once again I was beginning to fall in love with this place and all of the fun that surrounded it.  So as we arrived at the our bus stop there sat a big yellow, sixth grade reminiscent, McMinnville county school bus....but more importantly than our transportation needs were the mimosas that were also furnished....which would be a necessary key to the success of the day!  Loaded up and ready to rock we all where headed to somewhere which I truly never thought I would be....the home of the original Spruce Goose!  Our first stop was at Evergreen Aviation in McMinnville for a much needed mimosa refill and breakfast break.  All of the six school buses arrived and we were led into the massive museum at Evergreen Aviation where as we ate we wondered among pieces of aviation history.  Planes like the B-17 Flying Fortress, ME-109, Spitfire, and of course Howard Hughes' own Spruce Goose.  Now to some people this was only a mild morning of entertainment....but to me this was the whole Charlie Sheen Viagra thing times ten. I always have been a huge airplane buff...and to get to stand inside the Spruce Goose...with a mimosa in hand no less...well lets just say that Howard Hughes himself was probably never that happy in the belly of that monster...at least with all of his clothes on!   After breakfast we were led into the IMAX theater here at the museum where were shown a brief video about the reason for Oregon Pinot Camp and then each winemaker introduced his or herself.  Then back to our buses...but something was amiss with the red bus...my bus....we had been most deliberately attacked!!!  Spread all over the inside of our bus was a mass of hundreds of fake green dollar bills....about waste deep!  Now we could only assume that this came from our newly formed nemesis....the green bus!  After a little clean up all of the red bus campers began an immediate wartime session to plan retaliation....and retaliate we did!!!  However before we decided to enact our revenge we had some serious wine tasting and experimentation to complete...so after less than twenty four hours in Oregon I had accomplished so much....soccer, wine tasting, roasted pig, winemaker interrogation, classic airplanes, revenge of sabotage, and IMAX theaters ....but I had not even scratched the surface of this thing called "Pinot Camp"....

Learn from a pro....

So as I sit here today I am extremely hungover....but not just for any night of over consumption!  Auburn, Alabama was host to one of the best food and wine events that I have ever had the privilege to take part in.  Auburn University Chefs to the Recuse was an event pulled together in three short weeks to benefit the victims of the deadly tornadoes that ravaged our state on April 27th, 2011.  Hans Van der Reijden, the general manager of the Auburn University Hotel and Conference Center, Chef John Hamme of my restaurant Maestro 2300 and  a few others got together and decided to do a spin off of our walk-about wine tastings to raise money for the people that lost everything in these storms.  For a hundred dollars a person each guest received a wine glass and a informational packet that told them all about the different stations and who the chefs were.  Then they are free to walk-about to each of the stations where there is a different chef paired with a different wine or beer selection.  To make sure all of the proceeds from this amazing event were donated to the victims all of the food and wine was donated by food purveyors, wineries, breweries, and farmers so there was no cost to any of the chefs or staff involved except our time.  Now as much as I am honored to have been a part of this event, this is not the reason that I am writing this blog today....no sir.....the reason I am writing this today is to give you some pointers on how to successfully navigate one of these types of events and not end up in the pitiful fashion that I currently reside!

Once again, remember I am only trying to help you get through a night of amazing food and wine pairings with maximum enjoyment....and as I have stated I am not a literary genius and really don't have a filter from brain to mouth....so bear with me.  

Pointer number one....do a little recon when you arrive.  There is nothing worse at an event like this than getting full off of the the first three things you see and not being able to try the items that may be your true favorites.  When you arrive take your time to get a layout of the place.  Walk around and see what everybody has to offer, what the portion sizes are, and what the beverage selections are...then plan accordingly!  Every one of these events that I have attended, if it be the San Destin Winefest, Atlanta Food and Winefest, one of the numerous wine tastings that I have attended, or Oregon Pinot Camp (don't worry mom that's next week blog) I usually have had pretty good success in navigating through the less popular items on to the bigger and better things.  Personally I like to start with some bubbly, be it cava or champagne something about bubbles tells my liver to be prepared for what is coming.  After that on to the white wines, usually from light to heavy starting with a good German Riesling and moving all the way up the food chain to a good white Burgundy.  When I decide to transition to reds I normally begin with a pinot noir....but I am not one to turn my nose up at a good Barolo!  As for the food I like to try and keep my pairings light to start....maybe a fresh ceviche or tuna sashimi and then move into the heavier things like beef or pork later.  Following this pattern of light to heavy seems to let me fill up at a nice pace so I can match my buzz accordingly.

Pointer number two...take a beautiful women, or women plural, with you.  Now if you are a beautiful women this rule is obviously already taken care of....for the rest of us your gonna have to know a beautiful women that will trust you enough to get her drunk.  If you have this taken care of then most women will jump at the opportunity at getting to go to a wine and food tasting.  I know some of you are thinking that I sound like a chauvinist pig now....but that is not it at all....I am strictly thinking of the best rules to help you navigate an event where there will most certainly be male chefs serving you food and wine...this being said most of them like to look at beautiful women and therefore if it is an ugly chic or a pretty chic to get served next guess who they are gonna pick?!  At the event last night I was fortunate enough to be accompanied by three beautiful women and I can honestly say that I didn't have to wait for any food or wine all night!  Once again I am simply trying to make your night as pleasant as possible.

Pointer number three...and the most obvious...pace yourself.  Most food and wine events have a time limit.  The one last night was from six to eight thirty with a VIP tasting afterwards that lasted from nine to ten.  Now if you were not heeding my advice then by seven or seven thirty you could be trashed.  If that is how you like to roll than you are once again reading the wrong blog and probably will not get invited back to an event like this because your gonna be the drunk guy they throw out at seven forty-five....not good.  If they say these things are gonna last until eight thirty than you really only have until about eight fifteen or so before everybody starts to break down and head for the bars.  This is still plenty of time....trust me.   So figuring that you have over two hours of time if you hit a different station every fifteen minutes than you are gonna get to try eight different things.  Now I know that doesn't sound like alot on paper, but trust me when you are on your sixth glass of wine and sixth food item you will feel a little different.  Most of us eat three or maybe four things at a time and only may have one or two types of drink with a good dinner.  Now add on to the fact that you are eating and drinking faster than normal and you can see why I say pace yourself!

Pointer number four....when everyone starts breaking down hit up the wine stations for some freebies!  I am not trying to sound cheap by any means.....but these events always alot a certain amount of wine for each table....if you don't sweet talk your way into a free bottle of wine then the wine reps are just gonna take the freebies home with them and they already have enough wine...I mean they're wine reps for gods sake!  The easiest way to do this is to revert back to your successful tactic from pointer number two.  Send the beautiful women that accompanied you to this event over and let her do a little friendly persuasion on the person pouring the wine.  Now if you have successfully followed pointer number one and done a little recon than you have probably figured out which rep is the biggest pushover....this is where you begin.  Remember, if you don't at first succeed then try try again....you will eventually find one who will buckle under the pressure of a pretty smile.

Pointer number five...and the most important...HYDRATE!   This is the rule that I obviously did not follow last night!  Frank Sinatra used to say that he felt sorry for people that don't drink because when they wake up in the morning it's the best they feel all day....I strongly disagree!  You can safely navigate such an event and feel just fine the next morning....but not if you forget to hydrate.  Alcohol gets into the cells of your body and takes the place of the water in those cells....if you don't rehydrate those cells after drinking copious  amounts of boos then presto....hangover!  As I sit here today I can attest that if you skip this rule than you have missed the maximum amount of enjoyment of such a wonderful event...even if you think did the night before!  

These rules have successfully helped me navigate many such a wine tasting or food event in great gastronomical and alcoholic bliss.  Remember that if you to want to learn from a pro then follow these simple rules and you will be in much better shape than I am this afternoon!